Dr Shabana Chaudhry’s clinic in the heart of Mumbai’s Umerkhadi slum has had an unusually busy week. For the past five days, patients have been pouring in with young children in their arms and a litany of common complaints: burning eyes, sore throats, colds, coughs, fevers and pounding headaches.
“We have seen 25 children just this morning alone, in addition to asthma patients who are feeling more choked than normal,” said Afroze Zehra, a compounder working at the clinic.
Umerkhadi, an extension of the sprawling Bainganwadi slum in north-eastern Mumbai, sits right behind the Deonar garbage dumping ground where a massive fire broke out on the morning of January 28. Over the past five days, fire fighters have managed to control most of the blaze across the landfill, but smaller fires continue to flare in different sections of the dumping ground.
Fires in the Deonar ground – Mumbai’s largest and most over-full landfill – are not a new phenomenon. But last week’s blaze made headlines across the country as toxic smoke from the dumping ground engulfed almost the whole city in smog for at least four days. From Navi Mumbai to the southern tip of the city, residents have been waking up to dense smog, low visibility and extremely poor air quality. In fact, even on Monday morning, when most of the fire had subsided, Mumbai’s general Air Quality Index was found to be poorer than Delhi’s.
Forced to breathe in toxic air, residents of suburbs around Deonar have been using social media to vent their indignation and demand action from civic and state authorities. But the plight of those living closest to the dumping ground – like the patients at Dr Chaudhry’s clinic and two lakh other residents of Bainganwadi – has received very little attention since the fire began.
‘This is the worst fire I have ever seen’
“I have lived in this slum for the past 20 years and seen many fires in the dumping ground, but I can tell you for sure that this is the worst incident of fire ever,” said Mushtari Khan, a housewife with three children who live in a one-room hutment in Bainganwadi. “Every morning, the smoke has been taking up our house completely, and we can do nothing about it besides cover our noses and try to protect our children.”
The worst part about the toxic fog, says Khan, is its characteristic pungent smell that aggravates the throat. Even though the smog lifts as the day progresses and doesn’t set in again till the evening, a trace of the smell continues to linger in the air through the afternoon.
“The civic authorities closed down schools for just two days, but a lot of parents here are not sending their children to school even now, because it is very difficult to breathe in the mornings,” said Nasir Shaikh, 27, a designer in a local glass factory. “For the past few mornings, even traffic has slowed down in these parts because drivers just cannot see very far.”
Shaikh is among the many residents of Bainganwadi and Umerkhadi who have made complaints about the fire to civic authorities and local politicians, but so far, to no avail. Meanwhile, residents of the slums around the dumping ground have been left to fend for themselves, with children and the elderly particularly vulnerable to respiratory and other health risks.
The TB scare
Back in Dr Shabana Chaudhry’s clinic, 20-year-old Azra Fatima sits on a bench in the dark waiting room, nursing a splitting headache while her brother’s infant son plays in her lap.
“Ideally, I should be used to such pollution because there is nallah (drain) right behind my house where people burn garbage every two or three days,” said Fatima, a fashion designing student. “But this smog has been very different and it has made my sinus problem much worse. Besides, we are all afraid that someone might contract tuberculosis through the polluted air.”
Across Umerkhadi, residents have been sharing their plight about the smog and the Deonar fire rather enthusiastically. The only ones not eager to talk about their travails in the past five days are the many young boys who work in the dumping ground themselves.
“We have grown up on the dumping grounds so we actually are used to this pollution,” said Saif Ali Khan, a 22-year-old contract worker who prepares logs of the garbage trucks entering and leaving the dumping ground. “This fire is particularly terrible, yes, but we just cover our noses and get back to work. If we complain, how will we retain our jobs?”